The Hound of the Baskervilles

If you have read some of my other posts you know I have been working hard at compiling my 9th (10th?) grade son's literature curriculum for the year.  Most packaged curriculums only offer snippets of books.  I'd rather my kids read really great books in their entirety!  In my mind, the purpose of good literature is to transport the reader, to give the reader a new perspective to interpret his own life, and to spend time in imagination.

When I was a young student, I loved being in the middle of a book, and going to bed at night and dreaming about what those characters would do.  It sparks creativity.  If you only read a portion of a book, how can you develop a sense of the characters enough to imagine their responses, or to recreate their world in your head?

Also, it seems that most homeschool recommendations by grade level far exceed the grade level a corresponding public school student.  My son has only been out of public school three years, he's not reading at a college level yet.  I had to select books for him that he could understand and enjoy, not that he would struggle to get through and glare at me between chapters, which brings me to my next selection for this year.

I started The Scarlet Letter and Wuthering Heights earlier this summer, but they proved to be a little too Victorian and wordy.  You know how those first few chapters are spent trying to just get used to the rhythm of the language?  Well, not so with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (found on gutenberg.org).  In fact, I think that having completed that book, it might be a good stepping off point into other more challenging Victorian works. We'll see how it goes.

The language and style in this novel was about on par with Burnett's The Secret Garden, but the material was more mature, and there were more words that may not be known.  I'll provide a vocab list separately.  It was a fun run through the moor with enough twists and turns to keep the reader occupied without getting too confused.

I will say, for you Christian Homeschooling moms (of which I am, too) there may be some concern about the "man of science" position of Sherlock Holmes.  This is the first Holmes book I have read, and I didn't find it to discount faith at all.  The premise is that Holmes is presented with what sounds like a legend, an evil hound patrolling the moor at night to bring down the Baskerville empire.   Holmes discounts anything he can't quantify, thereby drawing conclusions from evidence not rumor.  Not a bad object lesson for teens in my opinion. 

In fact, I found a few quotes I thought opened some doors for conversation in morality and faith, like:
"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes", which to my mind brings up the obviousness of creation and nature itself and the denial by so many of a singular creator.
and
"The work to a man of my temperament  was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mold those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me", spoken by a former teacher.  Really?  Is that the job of an educator?  To impress them with the teacher's character and ideals?  Or to impress them with the textbook writer's ideals?  Or shall we be impressing Christ's own ideals on our children?
and the very thought provoking:
"A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away."  This statement about pursing a known murderer, an escaped convict, yet Holmes would only shoot him in self defense, not to take him down like an animal on the hunt.  Interesting perspective.  You can go so many different ways on this to share your family's perspective on protection of the family versus protection of the whole.  The rights of man, the guilt of us all.  So much you can do with that little thought.

My daughter is asking for some computer time, so I will update with vocabulary later.  It wasn't as thick in challenging words as The Call of the Canyon, so I may do this book before that one this year.


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